Graham Rowntree is fully confident that Munster will not allow the season to "fizzle out" as they face a double-header in South Africa.
Currently fifth in the BKT United Rugby Championship table and still not guaranteed a play-off place or a Champions Cup spot, Munster first take on DHL Stormers and then the Cell C Sharks over the next two weekends as they return to the country where they crashed out of Europe in a 50-35 defeat to the Sharks 11 days ago.
Last season, after a shootout loss to Toulouse in the Heineken Champions Cup, Munster, under then-head coach Johann van Graan, finished up with a dispiriting 36-17 away defeat to Ulster.
With a new back-room team in place and a page turned, Rowntree bristled at the suggestion that a similar ending could be in store.
"We've significantly changed how we do things," the head coach told RTÉ Sport ahead of Saturday’s match-up with the second-placed Stormers, the only team not to lose to Leinster in the URC this season.
"I think on the field, you’ve seen that.
"Fizzling out? Well, I won’t be referencing that in my team talk, with all due respect.
"There’s no one in this group ready to fizzle out. We've got to be better.
"We have shown what we can do this year. For all our wrongs and things we’ve had to do better in our last three games we’ve still scored a lot of tries.
"Obviously, we’ve got to stop the opposition scoring more.
"That’s what we can control but no, I’m not detecting anybody ready to fizzle out in this group. We can’t hide away from our own mistakes.
"We are the masters of our own downfall when we lose a game, and that’s no disrespect to the opposition, but a lot of it has always been down to us.
"What else can you do? You’ve got to get better, you take it on the chin, work hard and that’s what we’ve been doing."
Asked to expand on the reference to Munster as "masters of their own downfall", the former England prop referenced their Champions Cup loss in Durban, when a 17-14 half-time deficit turned into a 29-point chase after just 18 minutes of the second half.
"We speak about giving the opposition access to our try line through the maul and that comes with our making mistakes at the breakdown," he added of the seven-try defeat, which came on the back of a 38-26 home loss to Glasgow.
"That's comes down to our indiscipline. That’s discipline of sticking to the system and then you find yourself chasing the game.
"We got loose between 52 and 59 minutes in that game.
"We got loose and against a team like that, any scraps, any loose ball on the floor, they’re gone. [Wing Makazole] Mapimpi loves us throwing loose off loads so that’s what I mean 'masters of our own downfall’.
"We’ve got to cut out those mistakes. The top teams don’t make those mistakes. They don’t.
"We train with intensity to train to try and force those scenarios. With that, in game, we've got to be better than that."
Both the Stormers and the Sharks lost out in Europe last weekend, 42-17 and 54-20 to Exeter and Toulouse, respectively.
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